It’s Friday morning and I feel like an absolute tool. The sun’s rays serve only to strengthen my anger and I shield my eyes from them the way you would from an obese streaker or Bambi’s mom dying. I’m in no mood to talk and make the mercifully brief walk from Jewett to Olin with the relentless white noise of my head’s aching buzzing in my skull.
Just when I thought it was safe to go to class, I am greeted with an all too familiar sight: pamphlet guy. Everyone has encountered pamphlet guy in his or her life. Pamphlet guy lurks outside everywhere you ever consider going and, armed with willpower and the handiwork of some Kinko’s employee, proceeds in changing your life forever, or at least putting in an honest effort.
Pamphlet guy comes in a variety of incarnations: some worse than others. There’s “cause” pamphlet guy who feels compelled to remind you that three baby seals died in China because America loves oil. This particular iteration of pamphlet guy is excusable; while self-righteous, he at the very least thinks he is doing something to benefit . . . something. Wrong though he may be, there’s a certain nobility to it that can be admired.
The next rung on this ladder of irritation is the religious crusader. This man is trying to save your soul and he is doing it in five minutes outside your local movie theater. This is when pamphlet guy begins to become the condescending ass-clown we all know. He makes the amusing assumption that whoever he is talking to: be they religious or not: is the way they are simply because they have yet to be enlightened, simply because they have, as of yet, failed to read the 300 words of wisdom that will take them to the promised land.
While this form of pamphlet guy is annoying and condescending, still we can see a silver lining to his douchebaggery. He, like “cause” guy, is trying in a very misguided way to do something good. While his efforts are feeble and worthy of pity, he is trying to bring people on to a path that, he feels, will make them better off for it. This is why the religious crusader does not rest at the top of the ladder of irritation. This spot is reserved for the atheist avenger.
The atheist avenger is an alliterative pseudonym for the pamphlet guy we see who, identically to the religious crusader, seeks to change your life and do so very quickly and with little effort. The atheist avenger has all the qualities we attribute to the religious crusader with one notable exception: He has zero interest in bettering your life or the life of any other person.
The atheist avenger therefore proves the champion of idiocy in this hierarchy of self-righteousness. He seeks to change people’s viewpoints yet does so with no respect for the viewpoints he wishes to change. He sees no other side to the story and assumes that your religious beliefs are ripe for the sculpting. He does all of this and does it for no reason. What need would an atheist see in taking someone’s faith from them? What good could that do anybody? The fact is, it does no service other than gratifying the individual with the pamphlet. His joy in this vocation lies only in a condescending belief that he needs to drag people kicking and screaming from the safety of their faith. He benefits nobody and disrespects everybody to whom he so righteously hands that lime-green piece of paper.